For immediate release
May 18, 2012

Toronto, ON—A crowd of over 70 participants gathered to celebrate and enrich an unfolding history of workers’ resistance during the May 10th opening night for the “Workers: Makers of History” exhibit, part of the Mayworks Festival of Working People and the Arts. Hosted at the Beit Zatoun house in downtown Toronto, the exhibit featured community-based art pieces that both depicted and transformed the Filipino Canadian community’s experiences as a transnational community largely composed of workers. Aside from highlighting various personal and collective narratives of struggle as immigrants and temporary workers, the exhibit moreover became a testament to the transformative capacity of art and culture to expand that narrative into realizing the community’s vision of becoming genuinely settled and integrated within Canadian society.

The exhibit is a culmination of a collaborative project between Marissa Largo, Toronto-based artist and educator, and the Maleta [Suitcase] Project. It featured pieces from both Largo’s “Maleta Stories” exhibit, which originally premiered in the world-renowned contemporary art event Nuit Blanche, and the Maleta Project, a community-based project by progressive Filipino Canadian organizations. Centred around the theme of migration, the exhibit wove together migration histories that spanned across generations and communities, the combination of which depicted both the reality of Canada’s history as a settler-nation and the limitless possibilities of transforming this history towards building a society wherein its immigrants and workers can achieve their full participation and entitlement as vital contributors to the society.

Represented in multimedia art pieces, the exhibit pushed and raised awareness of how neoliberal labour and immigration policies are changing the face of Canada today—particularly evidenced through the Filipino Canadian community’s marginalization as Canada’s largest source of cheap and disposable labour. Despite being one of Canada’s fastest growing communities, the combined impacts of these neoliberal policies in effect legislate the community into poverty and non-participation in Canadian society. Such targeted yet exploitative measures, implemented to ensure competitiveness in an otherwise struggling economy, moreover represents an assault to working people and undermines the overall working class struggle as a whole.

The opening night featured powerful keynote speeches and cultural performances from members of the Magkaisa Centre and the Mayworks Festival. A keynote speech by Marissa Largo remarked on art and culture by saying, “Community art practice…facilitates the creation of alternatives to a society, which has institutionalized marginalization for Filipinos and other groups as seen in our schools, communities, workplaces, and migration policies.”

While the exhibit proved to be an unequivocal pronouncement of the community’s resistance against being relegated into the margins, participants immediately recognized the significance of sharing their maleta stories and reclaiming our history as workers. As one participant shared, “I didn’t expect to be this moved by the exhibit. I came to this exhibit because it was part of the Festival, but I didn’t expect to be moved by it.”

Through its framework of community collaboration, critical engagement and developing art practice, the maleta stories at “Workers: Makers of History” presented a growing challenge against the dominant narrative, one that simply accepts Canada’s need for cheap labour, the current regressive changes in immigration, acts of austerity and its impacts on all working class Canadians. Borne out of an empowered process, the exhibit not only reclaimed the role of workers as the true makers of history, but also represented a foray into creating a new culture of resistance. This exhibit was also be part of the “Workers’ Struggles Amidst Neoliberal Globalization” conference educational series, a North American workers conference this August 11th and 12th.

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WATCH the “My Folks” music video, which debuted at the “Workers: Makers of History” exhibit

For more information, contact:
Bryan Taguba
(416) 519-2553
siklab-on@magkaisacentre.org
www.magkaisacentre.org
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